


Tempest

by Phoenix_of_Athena



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: 2CT, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And I Just Needed Someone To Save Them, And Made Me Sick, Background Character Death, Because The Flashback Broke My Heart, Character Death, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I'm Not Ashamed, I've Been Working On This For Almost A Year, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Just like in canon, Multiple Corpses And Descriptions Therof, Undertaker Rescues The Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 00:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_of_Athena/pseuds/Phoenix_of_Athena
Summary: It was an impossible thing, this spark of a thought, and it wound around his brain in the week between the fire and the funerals.  It cut through the dark haze that seemed to have fallen over the world and caught him up in its inescapable wake:The children weren’t there—so where were they?Or: Undertaker does some investigating, kills some cultists, and rescues the Phantomhive twins.





	Tempest

The Undertaker’s arms were covered in soot and grime up to his elbows, and with every step he took his boots sunk down into the sticky layer of ash and mud from the wet snowfall the night before.  With a soft sigh, the mortician swiped a blackened hand across his forehead and pushed his bangs back from his eyes.  His long sleeve slipped down around his hand, and he rolled it back up with a frown before returning to his search.

The Undertaker had been scouring the ruins of the Phantomhive Manor for over six hours, fighting against the frigid wind and towers of rubble looking for corpses.  So far, he had discovered the remains of what seemed to be ten of the servants, and had carefully carried the blackened bones and misshapen bundles of charred fabric across fallen beams and toppled bricks to lay them out in front of his carriage across clean sheets.  Now, with his hair sent whipping across his cheeks by the blustery wind, he bent to heave a collapsed section of wall away from the familiar shape of bones amidst the sticky mud.  Grunting slightly, he pulled the mass of brick and mortar upright so it stood at the height of his chin, before letting it topple over in the other direction.  There, in the sodden ash and earth at his feet, was another skeleton.  Stooping down as he once more pushed up his sleeves, the Undertaker gently uncovered the bones.  As the dirt was wiped away and scooped out from around it, its shape became clearer, and it was apparent that this skeleton wasn’t human at all; the Undertaker’s wiping fingers became less delicate as he uncovered the remains of the dog, and less careful as he plucked up the bones to trudge wearily through the rubble once again to leave them by the others. 

Returning to his spot, he heaved a crumbling beam of wood out of the way only to stop, staring down at the two skeletons that were splayed across cracked stone at his feet.  Inside one ribcage glinted the gold of fine waistcoat buttons, and the Undertaker pressed his trembling fingers to his lips.  There, a gold signet ring hung off a thin bone.  There, scorched silver earrings glistened against the black of soot.  The Undertaker breathed deeply, his eyes clenched shut as the wind howled between empty walls and shattered windowpanes.  His deep breaths turned into heaving gasps, and he fell to his knees, cracking them painfully against a ledge of marble.  His hands fisted against the charcoal and ash, his long nails scraping deep furrows into the flaky surface of the charred beam.

Eventually, he pushed himself upright; ignoring the tears that cut streaks through his soot-marred face, he reached with gentle fingers to clean away debris and tenderly arrange the bones, blackened and brittle and fragile against heavy stone and flaking wood and filth.  Kneeling beside the remains, the Undertaker shrugged off his heavy outer robe and shivered in the winter air even as he laid the bones upon it to carry them out of the ruin. 

His teeth chattered and his eyes stung as he stood in front of the remains of twelve souls and one beast, the neat lines of clean white sheets at his feet of slowly darkening before his eyes, stained by the seeping mire and mud on which they lay. 

Tipping back his head to look up at the gray winter sky, the Undertaker’s hair was caught up in a burst of wind that sent it twisting madly about around his face.  His green eyes gleamed against the gray of his surroundings, and his mouth pulled tight into a grimace.  For a long moment, he remained standing there; then, turning, he went back to the search.  He had the bodies of several men and women left to find…along with two children.  His feet were steady as he walked amongst the rubble, and his hands stayed firm as they searched beneath wood and stone.

The search dragged on.  It stretched late into the evening until the twilit dusk sent him stumbling into craggy walls.  With his eyesight poor at the best of times, the Undertaker was forced to relent.  He had found nearly all of them; all but the children, the Phantomhive twins.  Treading through the broken ruins, the thought ate at him: the fact that he would need to return, and trawl this empty place again; the fact that somewhere, their tiny bodies were waiting for him; that he was forced leave them in the muck and silt and cold.  Shuddering, he dragged himself to his carriage and slowly loaded each of his new customers inside.  Then he pulled the brim of his hat down low and tucked his sleeves around his fingers; he sunk onto the hard wood seat and clenched the reins.  His eyes fell shut as the wind screamed through the barren forms of the trees, and he thought of a fire and a hot beaker of tea; he forced himself to move.  The clop of horses’ hooves was swallowed by the night.

 

The Undertaker returned, of course.  He overturned heaps of stone that scraped his hands and hauled himself over fallen planks and pillars.  He walked the ruins over the hard, frosted ground of the morrow, his breath coming in frigid puffs and his boots loosing purchase on frozen rock and ice.  He searched, to no avail.  Evening fell again, and he resolved to return.  But on the third day the children were still not found.  They were not there. 

_They were not there._

As the Undertaker ministered to his guests and worked at the graves, the thought remained.   It would not leave.  _The children weren’t there._  

It was an impossible thing, this spark of a thought, and it wound around his brain in the week between the fire and the funerals.  It cut through the dark haze that seemed to have fallen over the world and caught him up in its inescapable wake. 

The children weren’t there— _so where were they?_

The Undertaker lowered the last shovel of dirt onto an empty grave, and rested his hands on the handle. He watched the congregation with an idle eye and saw Alexis Midford place an arm around his wife’s shoulders and Edward Midford take his sister’s hand.  The wave of dark suits and dresses flowed around him and he watched until it lessened to a trickle. 

He wasn’t the only one who stayed unmoving before the graves.  The old man, Tanaka, rested his empty hands on his lap as he sat still in his wheelchair.  His folded body trembled, and the Undertaker saw his eyes flick back and forth as he read the names on the headstones.  The Undertaker watched the old man shake until he was shuddering before approaching.

“Hey, now,” he said, his voice loud and rasping in the silence, “I think it’s time to go, Mr. Butler.  Unless you want to end up as one of my guests, yourself.”

Tanaka’s head rose slowly, and he was slow to respond as well.

“Undertaker,” he said, and paused, “I don’t believe that title fits me any longer.  Without the Phantomhives—the Phantomhives….”

The Undertaker sighed, and reached out to grip the back of the wheelchair.

“Let’s just get you back to the Royal London Hospital, shall we?  Staring at these blocks of stone won’t do anyone any good.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Tanaka murmured, as the Undertaker gently helped him up into his carriage, “But I was standing right there.  I could have…I could have—!  The last thing I saw was the young master…he looked so scared.” 

The old man started to cry, and the Undertaker bowed his head.  He gritted his teeth, and turned to take the driver’s seat.

 

Three days went by, sluggish and dreary with heavy gray clouds.  The Undertaker kept himself busy, minding his shop, taking on customers, and poking his nose into the underworld where he wasn’t wanted.  And then, on the fourth day, he came upon an unusual body: a child’s body, bruised and raw with skin cleaved tight to his bones.  He was a nobody; a child of the streets.  But when the Undertaker took him on, the damage he discovered was disquieting even to him.  Human beings, he was oh so well aware, could be terrible, and the things this boy had suffered before he’d died…. 

It made him bitter. 

It made him curious.

It made him think. 

About children.  Children taken off the street; children missing….  The children he couldn’t find.  This…he knew that there was virtually no chance it was related, but he had been one of the Evil Noblemen for far too long to let it go.  He kept his ear to the ground and his eyes open, and when a second body turned up, well.  He did some investigating.  He had connections, after all, from serving as a bridge between the surface world and the underworld.  He had his knowledge, expertise, and well honed instincts.  Another body, and two weeks and one day since the fire, he had figured out the pattern of their dumping grounds.

From there, it was an awful lot of waiting, at all hours of the night.  Two more days passed him by, as he spent the daytime looking over the thin, manacle-bruised wrists and tortured frames of corpses.  In the nighttime, he haunted the churchyard where he waited for someone to leave a body.  And it seemed he’d chosen his location well, because the next night one turned up.

The carriage that clattered to a stop in front of the church’s iron gate was nondescript; it was dark, with weather beaten paint and mud-caked wheels that indicated a long journey.  The man who climbed down from the driver’s seat to pull the tiny body out of the cabin was heavy-set, and kept his collar pulled high and his cap low.  He dropped the small form on the steps of the church, and the Undertaker spared the thin corpse a pitying glance but kept his attention on the carriage.  There would be time to clean up the little one later, but for now, he watched the man take the reins back up and followed after him as he drove away.

It was altogether too easy from there.

As a shinigami, the Undertaker easily kept pace with the horses as they traveled out of the city and into the countryside.  Once or twice, he strayed too close and spooked the animals, making them falter and stamp as the driver cursed.  The night deepened, and carriage’s lantern stood out against the deep black cloak that settled over the rolling hills; the Undertaker drifted farther back, out of the horses’ hearing but within view of the glaring orange light as it swayed along the packed dirt road. The waxing moon crept higher and then lower again in the sky as they traveled, and the night was cloudless and frigid.  So far from the city lights, he could see a multitude of stars that were blotted out only by the low-lying silhouettes of trees.  For a moment, he felt small and adrift in the darkness, before the flickering of the lantern drew him back to earth.  He journeyed on, running and walking in fits and stops, always keeping his distance.  And then he crested another hill, and the Undertaker stopped, blinking spots out of his eyes: there, large and looming, and casting trails of colored light against the night through stained glass windows, stood a church. 

The Undertaker stood on the hilltop and watched the carriage dip down into the valley and then up again towards the building, and, no longer blinded by the suddenness of the light, he cast a careful eye over it.  It was more akin to a small cathedral in truth; an old one, for the outer façade was strewn with cracks and its many arcades were empty where the tracery had crumbled. This was a building that had been abandoned long ago…and since repurposed. 

The Undertaker took the slope of the hill at a run, abandoning the path of the carriage in favor of scaling the side of the building.  In a way, he mused, this little adventure of his was rather nice; it shook him out of his routine and even had him exerting himself slightly.  He hadn’t taken advantage of his abilities as a shinigami for some time, in favor of living as a human. 

But his good feeling shriveled and died in his chest as he shuffled along the slope of the roof to peer in through a window that was missing half of its glass.

Now, the Undertaker’s own life as a human had been a broken thing; his decades as a shinigami had shown him countless traumas and tortures and deaths.  And even in his retirement, he handled corpses and dealt with the worst cases that the underworld had to offer.

But there was something different about seeing it happen to someone. 

That. 

Was. 

Precious.

He’d found the twins, after all. 

_And they were hurting them._

The Undertaker’s lips twisted into a snarl as the wind shrieked along the wall of the desecrated cathedral, and without an ounce of hesitation, he flung himself through the window in a shower of glass.  All action in the room jerked to a stop at the crash, and he landed lightly on the balls of his feet in a crouch, one hand on the brim of his hat.  Behind his bangs, luminescent green eyes flashed across the room.

The twins were pinned down, one on his back and the other on his hands and knees, the larger forms of their masked abusers dwarfing them and pressing them into the floor.  Their bare forms were thin and dirty and covered in the evidence of countless traumas. 

The Undertaker rose swiftly to his feet before throwing himself forward in a flash of movement to the closest child.  Unflinchingly, he took one of the men by his meaty, robed arm and flung him away; swooping in, he scooped the boy up into his arms and dashed away again.  He did not speak as he peeled a masked woman off of the other child and kicked another away from where she held down his arms. 

Around him, there was chaotic shouting as the villains scrambled away and to their feet.  The twin on the ground stared up at him, his dark blue eyes wide enough to hold the reflection of the glittering chandelier above their heads. The child in his arms immediately began to squirm to be let down, and the Undertaker did so, gently, loosening his arms and watching as he immediately latched onto his brother.  The other boy’s gaze flickered from him to his twin, and it was he who spoke, in a voice that was far too ragged a whisper for a child.

“You…you’re Father’s scary friend, aren’t you?”

Around them, the children’s beastly captors were gathering loosely, still shouting for each other. 

“Vincent’s…?” the Undertaker said softly, and something that at any other time could have amusement tickled his voice, “Yes.  That’s actually a very good description of my person.”

His head rose a split second before a candelabrum wielded by one of the robed men arced downwards toward his face.  His lips tilted again into a frown, and he caught the heavy metal candle holder before it struck him.  The twins gasped, and he looked down at them, their forms tiny and pale on the floor of the cathedral, with scratches and bruises dotting their bodies.  Their bare feet and knees were scraped raw from the rough stone of the ground, and they huddled together as they clutched each other, breathing harshly.  He looked back up towards the man opposite him, still holding the other end of the candelabrum. 

“Didn’t you hear?” he asked lightly, “I’m Vincent Phantomhive’s scary friend; It’ll take a bit more than a candlestick to get rid of me.”

The man gulped, his adam’s apple bobbing behind the collar of his robes as beads of sweat gathered on his neck and face; the Undertaker found himself grinning coldly at the man’s wide dark eyes and the way his breathing quickened under his gaze.  For a long, heavy moment, he felt like a bloodhound in the instant before its jaws closed around the throat of a helpless rabbit.  Then the moment was broken with a bang as the wide church doors were flung open; one of masked reprobates had gone and retrieved a gun.  How quaint.

Using the candelabrum in his grip, the Undertaker tossed away the man who’d thought to take a swing at him, and turned once more to the children, dropping to a light crouch before them.

“It’s about to get a little rough in here, boys,” he said as he pulled one arm out of his outer robe to shrug it off, “I’d recommend that you not look, but…”  He paused as he wrapped the garment about their thin shoulders.  It swallowed them completely, leaving only their pale, round faces bare.  “Who am I to tell you what to do?  What do I know; you might enjoy it.”  He stood swiftly to face the heavily breathing man in the doorway who pointed the gun at him.

“Well…?” he said, “Aren’t you going to shoot me?”

The wide room was silent apart from stifled breaths and the moaning of the wind outside the open doors.  In the darkness, beyond the dark swath the doorway cut in the glittering candlelight of the room, the Undertaker could see the rise of a distant hill and the low-hanging moon. 

The man spoke, stumbling slightly on his words in his intensity.

“How did—how did you find this place?  Who are you?” 

The gun wavered in his grip.

 “Who, me?” the Undertaker said, his lips quirking into a wide, insincere grin, “I’m just an undertaker.  And you see…." He tapped one long fingernail against his lips. “You made it simple for me. You left quite a trail of corpses, and it was easy to follow you.  I have some practice, since I’m one of the so-called ‘Evil Noblemen,’ an’ all.”

A few gasps sprang up around the room.  It seemed that at least some of these wretches were familiar with the workings of the underworld that they had joined. 

“He came for the Phantomhives!” someone whispered.

“Were we too arrogant, thinking we could use _them—?!_ ” said another.

“Quick, _shoot him!”_ came a shout, and the Undertaker’s grin dipped into something wicked.  Behind him, the wide-eyed children huddled under the heavy dark cloth of his robe.

“He really…he really came for us?” one of them whispered, in something like a choked sob, and in the next instant a shot rang out.  The Undertaker barely twitched before his scythe was in his hands.  Its long, smooth handle was comfortable in his grip despite the years gone by without its use, and the heft of the weapon was utterly familiar as it whisked through the air to cleave the bullet clean in two.  The next shot ricocheted off of the flat of the blade as he angled it, sparking off to strike another man in the gut.  He fell with a cry, and the shooter froze.  The Undertaker twirled his death scythe in his hands and sighed.

“C’mon,” he said cajolingly, “don’t tell me that the lot of you are cowards as well as monsters.  I just got one of you people shot.  Aren’t you going to stop me?”

He stepped forward, scythe raised, and one of the masked women panicked, her breath catching in her throat.  Her trembling, grasping hand found the neck of a champagne bottle, and in an instant she had thrown it.  The Undertaker ducked, his mouth stretched into a firm grin, and he nudged the bottle slightly with a fingertip as it flew through the air.  It struck another of the wretches in the face, and he dropped as the Undertaker began to chuckle.  Another member of the group actually lifted one of the gilt chairs, and the hall fell into chaos.  Seemingly casually, the shinigami ducked and dodged and allowed them to trip into his scythe and strike each other down as he led them about and herded them away from the twins.  Blood flew through the air in dark crystalline arcs as he swept throughout the turmoil; his scythe caught the candlelight in flashes of orange and silver that gleamed against the shadows in the hollows of its bones.  He tipped his head to the side to avoid a thrown champagne glass, and his hat fluttered to the floor. 

Amidst the frenzy, the Undertaker carefully cleaved away each soul, leaving nothing behind for future shinigami to stumble across.  He had kept his true nature hidden for a long time, and it wouldn’t do to take the children away from here only to be pursued by shinigami hunting for a deserter.

 One of the cleverer, or perhaps more foolish men attempted to go after the children, and the Undertaker was before him in an instant, kicking him away and then following after, swinging his blade in a sharp downwards arc.  Glancing around him as the body fell, the Undertaker considered his options before lifting his gaze; a wide sweep of his scythe dislodged the sparkling chandelier from the ceiling, and it fell with a resounding crash.  As the dust cleared, it became obvious that only one robed figure remained standing: the man by the door, who clutched his gun with shaking hands.  The Undertaker raised his head to look at him, and the man scrambled towards the exit, only to find his way barred.  His chest bumped lightly into the outstretched handle of the Undertaker’s scythe, and the man let out a squeak, tripping over his feet as he stumbled backwards and fell gracelessly to the floor.  The Undertaker leered over him with a grin, and without thinking the man fired off a shot.  The rebound stuck him squarely in the head and he fell, the gun clattering to the floor as it slipped from his hands.   

For several heartbeats the room was absolutely still, and the Undertaker breathed slowly, his smile slipping from his face, still poised before the corpse that he had made; then, distantly, there came a soft rustling, and then the gentle padding of bare feet across the cold stone floor.  The twins stood in front of him, their grimy, frayed clothes now hanging off their thin shoulders and hips.  One of them held out his hat in an outstretched hand, and the Undertaker sagged.  The butt of his scythe hit the ground, and he slowly reached out a hand to take the proffered hat.  Its long black train trailed along the dirty floor over shattered glass and blood, and he took it gently, gazing down at it for a long moment before placing it back on his head. 

“Well,” he said, and his voice echoed about the knave of the church.  One of the boys flinched.  “Well,” he said again, softer, in a raspy whisper, “why don’t we steal one of their carriages and go home?”

A small hand latched onto his sleeve and the Undertaker paused, looking down at the head of dark, matted hair.

“Wait,” the boy said in a tiny voice, “what about the others?” and the Undertaker’s breath caught in his throat.  Slowly, gently, he rested his hand on the child’s head and smiled.

“If there are others,” he said, “then we’ll just have to free them too.  That is what you’re asking, isn't it, little Phantomhive?” 

The child nodded, and stepped back to clasp his brother’s hand again as both twins looked up at him with resolute eyes.  The Undertaker chuckled wonderingly; their determination, their sheer strength of heart even after all this, stunned him.

“Right then,” he said, “why don’t you show me where to go, and I’ll—” he stooped, plucking the discarded pistol off of the floor— “give you this.”  The other twin stepped up with an open hand and the Undertaker carefully folded his fingers around it, showing him how to hold it.

“Just in case,” he said.  “I’ll be by your side the whole time, but you should have the power to defend yourselves as well.” 

The child swallowed hard and looked up at him with trembling lips even as he nodded firmly.  The gun was held securely in the hand not gripping his brother’s, and without the slightest hesitation the boy turned to lead them towards the back of the cathedral.  The Undertaker walked behind them, pulling his robe back about his shoulders, and wondered at their straight backs and firm shoulders under rags and grime and pain.  He clenched his scythe in his hand and released long breath, something in his chest tight and aching.  It caught him off balance, and he had to consciously steady his footsteps as they approached a doorway that seemed to lead beneath the building.  The boy stopped before the heavy gray door, his quickening breath catching in his throat, and the Undertaker raised his head, stepping forward.  He placed a brief hand on the child’s shoulder before unlatching the door to push it open. 

The downward leading stairs were deeply shadowed, and the twin without the pistol pulled away to snatch up a candlestick.  But still the children hesitated, and the Undertaker took the lead with a light, “Watch my back, won’t you boys?” and stepped softly down.  His boots echoed along the stairwell, and both of the children clutched their tools in rigid fists.

They entered a wide, short, hallway with two opposing doors, and one of the boys pointed towards the door on their right.

“That’s where we’re kept,” he whispered, and the Undertaker hummed slightly.

“And the other?” he asked.

“Never been there,” murmured the other twin, and the Undertaker pursed his lips.

“Best take a look,” he said, “just in case,” and the twins trailed after him as he moved to open the door.  It swung slowly inwards and the Undertaker went still, a shudder rippling down his spine as his eyes flew wide.  This…was something he hadn’t expected, although perhaps he should have.

 The doorway led into an amphitheater-like room with rows of stairs and partitioned seats looking down upon an altar, the floor around it traced with a summoning circle.  A summoning circle for a _demon._   Not for the first time this night, the Undertaker fought the urge to retch, one hand rising to brace himself on the doorway as his breathing stuttered.  Tearing his eyes away from the deserted room, the Undertaker looked to the Phantomhive children.  _Whole,_ he reminded himself, and the sudden relief threatened to overwhelm him.  They stood battered but whole at his side.  Anything that could have happened _hadn’t,_ because he had arrived there in time.  They were alive.  Their souls were intact. 

“What…what is this…?” asked the boy holding the candlestick, and the Undertaker gently chivvied them out of the room, away from the damnable altar and empty cages, and shut the door firmly behind them.

“That…” the Undertaker said, gazing down at the wide-eyed children, “that is the setup for something vile.  The people who used this church were _devil_ worshipers.  They practiced human sacrifice, although it seems they’ve always failed….”

“H—Human sacrifice?”  The boys clutched each others’ hands tightly, and the Undertaker’s eyes narrowed. 

“Not anymore,” he reminded them, “they can _never_ hurt you again.  You’re safe now; we’ll retrieve the rest of the children and leave.  We can destroy this place and never come back.”

“R—Right,” said the boy holding the pistol, “let’s hurry up and leave.”  He tugged his brother towards the remaining door, and the Undertaker followed after.

Beyond the door was another curving staircase, this one longer and deeper than the first, and the Undertaker took care to enter first, his tall form casting long and flickering shadows on the walls as they descended.

This time the room that they entered was wide and long enough to hold four rows of heavy cages.  The walls were lined with pilaster arches, upon one of which was mounted a single, low-burning torch. The Undertaker’s nose crinkled at the smell of the stale, musty air; the scent of human waste and unwashed bodies was close to suffocating, and his eyes darted down once again to the children at his side. Then he cast his gaze out over the cages and hummed under his breath.

“No keys,” he said, striding forward to the nearest cage.  That was slightly inconvenient, but not terribly, as he pressed the tip of his scythe against the lock to slice it open. The latch hit the ground with a clatter, and the boy and girl inside jolted, scrambling away.  The Undertaker let the door swing open and backed off, hesitating.

The twin with the candlestick pushed forward.

“It’s okay!” he said, his face open and his voice near cheerful.  He reached the door of the cage and held out an empty hand. 

“We’re escaping; somebody we know came to save us!  It’s safe to come out.” 

The girl’s eyes darted from his face to his outstretched hand, and she glanced behind him to the Undertaker and the twin at his side.  Slowly, shakily, she reached out, and he gripped her hand and led her out of the cage.

“We’re…escaping…” the girl whispered, and abruptly dropped his hand to spin about, her frayed, filthy dress flaring outward. “We’re _escaping_!”  She shrieked the word, and stumbled back to the boy who was imprisoned with her to drag him out.  The Undertaker moved on to the next cage, and the next, and the twins and their following of children helped to coax out the others.  When all of the cages stood empty, he led them up the stairs, the twins bobbing at his side with the candle to illuminate their way.  The trek upwards was marked by nearly silent sniffles and the shuffling of feet, as they passed through the small chamber and then the upper flight of stairs.

Glass crunched under the Undertaker’s boots as he stepped through the doorway into the main hall of the church.  Behind him, the children huddled, quiet, their bare feet whisper-soft on the floor.  The wavering light of the candle fluttered at his back, and a small hand came up to tug gently at his sleeve. 

“They shouldn’t walk in there without shoes” said the twin who peered up at him through long, unkept bangs, and the Undertaker gave a slight smile to the boy.

“You’re right, of course,” he said, and considered the room in front of him. 

It was cast more deeply in shadows now, without the glow of the massive chandelier, and shards of glass and splinters of wood were strewn across the cobbled floor amidst the bodies.  At the other end of the hall was the doorway, its doors hanging open to reveal the clear, frigid night beyond them.  The clean chill of the wind seeped into the church, setting shadows from the remaining candles leaping across the walls and floor. 

Once again, the Undertaker pulled off his outer robe, and leaned forward to sweep at the floor with it, bowed over as he cleared the path to the doors.  Behind him, the children trailed restlessly, leaning towards the frigid night as though drawn to it. 

Stepping through the heavy doors, he was almost caught off guard by the icy claws of wind that tore at his clothes, and he swept a sharp glance over the line of children that followed after him.  Frowning, he allowed the wind to whip at his cloak as he held it aloft, before turning and draping it once more over the Phantomhives. 

“Come along,” he said, and swiftly led the way over to the row of carriages nearby.  Some were opulent, luxurious or with elaborate crests painted on the doors.  The only one with the horses still hitched was the worn, mud-caked one he’d followed, and he ushered the children towards it. 

Carefully, he helped each of the children into the carriage, one by one with gentle hands.  It was cramped; a tight fit inside of the cabin, and some of the children were crying while some had yet to respond at all other than walking as directed.  The twins stood to the side, huddled close under his heavy robe.  Their bare toes dug into the brittle, frosted grass as the wind whipped at their bare legs where the loose ends of the robe flapped about. The Undertaker looked from the twins to the crowded carriage, a light frown marring his lips.  Softly, he closed the carriage door. 

“It looks like you’ll have to ride with me, then, boys,” he said, affecting an upbeat tone. If it came out strained, neither child commented, but only shuffled forwards at his beckoning. 

“Up we go!” he sing-songed, as he lifted the boys up one at a time onto the driver’s seat.  As he heaved himself up to join them, the wind finally caught at the wide brim of his hat, leaving him blinking as it tumbled into the air.  There was a sudden clatter as the gun fell to the floor at the twin’s feet, and a small hand darted out, grabbing the trailing end of the hat before it was lost.  The Undertaker looked up at the boy, locking eyes with him as his bangs were scattered about his face.  Then he stepped up to join them, and took it slowly from his hand.

“This is the second time you’ve returned my hat to me,” he chuckled, “thank you, little Phantomhive.”

The boy smiled weakly, his cheeks flushed from the cold, and the Undertaker settled down on the hard bench. The twins huddled into his sides, their legs drawn up with the robe wrapped tightly around all three of them.  The Undertaker tugged the brim of his hat down low and clutched the reigns.  He thought of home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Well.  
> This was written in fits and stops over the past several months, sometimes at 3 am, sometimes in the afternoon after stewing over ideas all day at work. Honestly...I just needed this. I fucking cried over chapter 135 when it came out, way back when. The flashback tore my heart out over and over, and I. Just. Needed this. Maybe some of you needed it too.
> 
> (The thing is...in canon...what the Undertaker did to r!Ciel is despicable. Like, every time I go a while without reading the manga I forget how I've begun to resent Undertaker's character, because he was a fav of mine for a long time. But just...some things, no matter what reasons they were done for...are not forgivable. Sometimes I think that the only good, decent character in kuro is Lizzy. Or maybe Edward. ...Honestly, everyone's screwed.)
> 
> (Also, I talked about the wind so much in this. So much. That's why it's called Tempest.)


End file.
